Almost a decade after the first election of a South African government on the basis of "one person, one vote" and the official end of apartheid, the legacy of that brutal system "still defines the mining sector in this country," stated the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in a June 9 statement supporting the bill. "Highly concentrated ownership patterns have brought huge wealth to a small number of companies, with profits accumulated on the back of the exploitation of mine workers over more than a century."

"Even today," said the union federation, "mineworkers live in abysmal conditions and are subjected to unhealthy and unsafe working conditions underground."

South Africa boasts the world’s biggest deposits of gold, platinum, and chromium. The first two account for around 20 percent of the country’s exports. The country’s terrain also contains substantial deposits of diamonds, manganese, copper, and other minerals. The mining industry employs roughly 500,000 people in a total population of 44 million, 75 percent of which is African.

The London-based Anglo-American group and other capitalist interests in South Africa have for decades benefited from their stranglehold over these deposits. Even with the abolition of apartheid-era laws that barred blacks from owning or managing mines--operated with cheap black labor--this monopoly has made it almost impossible for would-be black businessmen to get into the industry.

With gold and other precious metals playing an increasing role as refuges for investors in a period of financial instability and economic decline, the stakes go beyond South Africa into the major imperialist powers.

Dubbed the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Bill, the legislation was signed into law by President Thabo Mbeki on October 4. It transfers ownership of mineral deposits to the government, enabling it to lease mining rights to a greater variety of companies, including those that incorporate black investors. Successful bidders will pay royalties in return for 30-year mining leases. To qualify they have to provide evidence that they are working with "black partners."

Mbeki assured the companies that they would receive "fair market value" for any assets appropriated by the government.  
 
Bill meets opposition from capitalists
The first draft of the legislation--whose provisions bring South African legislation "in line with standards in the rest of the world," said COSATU--met widespread opposition from the mining capitalists when it was first introduced. They argued that it "violated property rights" and would "undermine the confidence of international investors."

The bosses reserved special criticism for early versions of an associated document dealing more directly with the industry’s color bar, the Broad-Based Socio-Economic Empowerment Charter for the South African Mining Industry.

When government MPs first floated the charter they suggested that new mining operations should be 51 percent black-owned within 10 years and that black-run groups should own up to 30 percent of the mining industry.

After furious objections from mine owners and major companies, government ministers described such figures as a "negotiating position," and affirmed that they would not nationalize the industry.

The charter’s final version, which was hammered out in government-employer negotiations, declares its aim to be "the pursuit of a shared vision of a globally competitive mining industry."

Without prescribing quotas to fulfill or penalties for noncompliance, it says that companies that undertake to meet its provisions shall "aspire to 40 percent" participation of "historically disadvantaged South Africans" in management of the industry within five years.

The empowerment charter hints at the living conditions endured by many black miners, urging companies to "undertake to establish measures for improving housing, including the upgrading of hostels [and] conversion of hostels to family units."

It was in the mines that hostels for male migrant workers were first introduced by the apartheid regime, along with the introduction of "passes" that placed black workers at the mercy of police and other authorities.

The mining companies have for the most part resigned themselves to the passage of the bill and the charter, concentrating their efforts on press amendments on the government. Barry Davison, the chief executive of Anglo American Platinum Corp. and president of the country’s Chamber of Mines, called the law a "very satisfactory compromise."  
 
Regime of the past
A commentary in the liberal Johan-nesburg-based Mail and Guardian stated, "All the acrimony around the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Bill should not obscure one central fact--there was no way a majority-rule South Africa could hang on to the mineral rights regime of the past.

More than any other industry, with the possible exception of agriculture, the mines symbolise white domination of the economy and the labor repression of the colonial and apartheid eras."

In their June 9 statement the COSATU officials, while recording their support for the legislation, said that along with National Union of Mineworkers leaders they would be voicing "concerns that the Bill does not go far enough in undoing monopoly ownership in the [mining] sector. The danger of the licensing system envisaged in the Bill is that once a company gets an initial prospecting right for a mineral, it becomes very easy for them to get mining and renewal rights ad infinitum. This may well lead to a situation where ownership patterns in a few decades’ time are not significantly different from today’s."

The union statement also criticized the legislation for paying too little "attention to the human dimension of mining. We want to see the licensing system used as leverage to upgrade workers’ living and working conditions and health and safety standards in the industry."
 

Along with unsafe working conditions and low wages, black mine workers have to contend with a blight of more recent vintage: the HIV/Aids pandemic. The country’s largest gold producer, Anglo-Gold--number two in the world--has announced that between 25 percent and 30 percent of its 40,000 employees are HIV-positive.

In response, Anglo-American started providing antiretroviral drugs to sick workers in mid-November. Chief Executive Robert Godsell explained the calculations behind its decision to pay $100 million a year toward employees’ health costs. With the drugs, the cost of the disease amounts to $4 to $6 an ounce of gold. "Unman–aged, these costs would escalate to $9 an ounce," reported the Business Report. The metal is currently trading at more than $300 an ounce.

--P.O.
 
 
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